³³ Happy New Year!!! A New Years treat for all the railfans out there.³³ Southern Pacific's "Oil Cans" exits Tunnel #5 in Tehachapi Aug '91. Lead units put out more smoke in contrast to helper units, usually it's the opposite.
We were THE most awesome railroad back in the 1980s and 90 until the merger. Our locos might have been dirty, but we slugged it out up the mountains and thru valleys carrying coal and oil. The good old days
SP was the most awesome railroad. I just purchased an SP SD45 at a train show and I think one of my next videos is going to be an Espee train through Tehachapi in the 1990s
I read in Diesel Era magazine how the Southern Pacific would order them new with all the bells and whistles but then run them into the ground. It got so bad that EMD had to threaten SP to void the warranties. But that is part of what made SP so interesting to me!
If you watch closely you can see the engines stop smoking as they emerge from the tunnel. I suspect the engines were starved for air which caused the plume of unburned fuel in the exhaust.
That's exactly what I was thinking! The exhaust of each loco cleans up as it exits the tunnel. The engines must have sucking all the air out of the tunnel.
You'd probably be dead or passed out if the tunnel was long enough, thats basically what you'd call being gased (like what some people do with cars in a garage)
DROOL..DROOL..DROOL!! My absolute favorite of yours, Kevin. The SP that I love, the one that just slugged it out and kept on working no matter how tough the challenge. The one that went to EMD and said: Hey fella's, we've got this smokin' hot bitch...oh yeah, and she's a tunnel! Also, I think the 6873 is going to need a pine tree air freshener in the cab, maybe two.
wrong. SP used tunnel motors for cooling reasons. the smoke level is no different between sd40-2 and sd40t-2.Hence why no "t" units where made there after. all later release EMD units have the air intake drop down the side of the loco. sd50 and sd60 is really noticeable. The cooling arrays went back to high mounts in favour of larger cooling arrays and more efficient designs.
A big happy family out there is making a great barbeque session. There is no EMD's turbocharged dinosaurs also known as 'a damn good diesel locomotive starving for oxigen rich air':))))... Another good way to get rid of any mosquitoes within 300 ft. Good job sir. You made my day a little bit better. Love these EMD 16-645 powered beasts.
No, modern units make just as much smoke when running hard through a long tunnel. The smoke is purely because there's not enough oxygen in the tunnel to burn the fuel fully -- doesn't matter how good your engine is. If they'd filmed that train away from a tunnel, there wouldn't have been a whole lot of smoke. A little more than a modern locomotive, but not a huge amount.
Woah .. Holy Smoke!! literally!! get the chalks out if you wanna weather these units. Check out the last unit on the head end, windows must have been left open, watch the smoke pour out as it passes!!
@@santeebandit3246 ...I drove from Colorado twice a year back then to watch the oil cans...I'm glad I did...you think things will never change...but blink...and they're gone...fossil fuel power hauling fossil fuels in California without much EPA interference...gotta love it...
Que fin tuvieron esas locomotoras ya están muertas o todavía siguen en la lucha alguien me puede decir que paso con ellas eran fuertes díganme donde las puedo encontrar esas locomotor y en que estados gracias por todo mi gente
Is it, though? That smoke's only visible close to the tunnel. To me, it looks more like the train is just dragging exhaust smoke out of the tunnel at ground level. The same smoke is visible around teh tank cars.
Who ever gives this a thumbs down just doesn't appreciate what the Espee did so well. Sure she was looking sketchy by this time, but that doesn't matter. Things we miss.
Someone left a window open in the 6873 and the as the engines clear the tunnel smoke the smoke is POURING out of that cab...YOU D have suffocated in that cab! I don t think that was survivable. Wow!!!! GREAT SHOT!!!!! LOVE IT!!!You can also see the railfans on top of the tunnel getting out of the way of all that smoke. WOW!!!!
Someone left the winders open on the fourth unit!!! LOL. I also noticed there were a couple of regular sd40-2's in the helper set. I bet those crew members pry try not to breathe much inside the tunnel I know the cabs had to get smoky.
I did not know that thanks for the clarification. I was using my wife's account before lol. This video is really making me wanna buy a Tunnel motor for my HO scale layout!
I also believe that all of the units in that picture were two-stroke diesels (if I remember right, all EMD diesels until very recently were), which means on top of the problems with dirty exhaust caused by oxygen starvation and subsequently the engines running very rich (which creates far more particulate matter), two stroke engines require oil injection for lubrication, which surely is no help to pollution.
No oil injection on a 2-stroke diesel, only 2-stroke gas engines. A 2-stroke diesel has an oil sump and an oil pan and an oil pump that circulates the lube oil the exact same way as any other gas or diesel motor. The diesel fuel doesn't get mixed with anything, it gets injected into the cylinder when the piston is at TDC. Look up EMD engines or Detroit Diesel engines on Wikipedia or the internet, find a video demo of how they work. It's really hard now to get 2-stroke diesels to meet emissions standards, so they may give way if the builders cannot figure out how to lower the output of NOX gasses, and particulate matter (which the DPF's are supposed to capture, hold, then later burn into ash). The ones that are left in operation are basically Grandfather'd to be allowed to soldier on, but at least for highway engines, they haven't been building or selling them for highway use for over 20 years now. Can still get parts for them, can still run them in older trucks, just can't buy them as OEM engines any more, and soon that may happen to locomotives too, if they can't make them run clean enough. Oddly enough though, huge tanker and cargo-carrying ships do still use very-low-speed 2-stroke engines, those things are bigger than some locomotives, and they top out around 102 RPM max. Don't know what the reg's are for emissions for ocean vessels. Just for reference, the EMD loco engines topped out at 950 RPM, most of the old 53, 71, and 92-series Detroits needed to hang at 2100 or more to produce usable power; they usually maxed out at 2400 RPM although some would scream beyond that. I, for one, didn't, don't, and won't miss 2-stroke Detroits on the highway. I'm amazed I still have 95% of my hearing intact.
Two stroke diesels don't use the crankcase to push the air into the cylinder. Air can be pushed into cylinders by turbos and or superchargers or just natural aspiration. two stroke diesels have ports for intake air in the cylinders and valves for the exhaust gases. The diesel is injected into cylinder. Two stroke gasoline engines use the piston to pressurize the crankcase and force the gas and air mixture from the carburetor through the ports in the cylinder wall. There is no crankcase oil thus the oil added to the gasoline.
The smoke is forcibly ejected from the locomotive and will spread out in all directions. Except that it's constrained by the tunnel, so can only go forwards or backwards. There may also be a breeze blowing in the same direction that the train is moving, pushing air through the tunnel.
no wonder why Espee utilized the tunnel motors and the cab-forward steam locomotive design back in the day. Good grief- it certainly helps explain the nearly black of the locomotives after outshopping.
I suppose every generation has its 'glory days'. Steam had its own, of course. But now in the 2000's we look back at these late 1980's and wish we could return to them.
sheesh, those things created more smoke that a single steam locomotive!! _and some people say that diesels are more environment friendly than steamers. . ._
OMG, the forth Engine (Cotton Belt) leading in the front had black smoke pouring out of the crew cab window......WTF? Why weren't all those windows shut closed?
